Apple
|
Apple
| |
| Founded | April 1, 1976 — Cupertino, California |
|---|---|
| Founders | Steve Jobs · Steve Wozniak · Ronald Wayne |
| Headquarters | Apple Park, Cupertino, California |
| CEO | Tim Cook (since 2011) — John Ternus from September 1, 2026 |
| Products | iPhone · iPad · Mac · Apple Watch · Apple TV · Apple Vision Pro · AirPods |
| Software | iOS · iPadOS · macOS · watchOS · tvOS · visionOS |
| Services | App Store · iCloud · Apple Music · Apple TV+ · Apple Pay |
| Hardware platform | Apple silicon |
| apple.com | |
[ Show / Hide ]
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Apple (legally Apple Inc.) is an American technology company headquartered at Apple Park in Cupertino, California. Founded on April 1, 1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne to sell the Apple I computer, it grew through the Macintosh, survived a near-death 1990s, and — following Jobs's 1997 return — produced the run of products that made it, by most measures, the most valuable company in the world: the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple Watch, and the services and silicon empires built atop them.
Apple's defining method is vertical integration: it designs the hardware, the operating systems (iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, visionOS), the chips (Apple silicon), and the services (App Store, iCloud, Apple Pay) as one stack. The iPhone — the company's largest business since roughly 2010 — anchors an ecosystem strategy in which each product reinforces the others, from AirPods pairing to Continuity features spanning Mac and iPhone.
1 History✎
The Apple II (1977) built the personal-computer industry's first fortune; the Macintosh (1984) introduced the mouse-driven graphical interface to the mainstream. Jobs's 1985 ouster and 1997 return bracket the company's wilderness years, ended by the iMac (1998) and the "digital hub" strategy: the iPod and iTunes (2001) made Apple a consumer-electronics power, and the iPhone (2007) with its App Store (2008) redefined computing outright. The post-Jobs decade under Tim Cook scaled the formula — iPad (2010), Apple Watch (2015), AirPods (2016), services, and the Apple silicon transition (2020) — culminating in the Vision Pro's spatial-computing bet (2024) and the Apple Intelligence AI platform (2024–).
2 Products and platforms✎
Current hardware spans the iPhone 17 generation, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Vision Pro, and AirPods; each runs an operating system from the shared Darwin family, updated annually in lockstep (all at version 26 as of 2025–26). The App Store distributes software across all of them, and Apple silicon powers all of them — the A, M, S, C, and N series covering phones to Macs to modems.
3 See also✎
- iPhone · iOS · macOS · Apple silicon
- Steve Jobs · Apple Park
[ Show / Hide ]
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||